


fealty and offering

by pocky_slash



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Marriage, Oaths & Vows, Secret Marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-09
Updated: 2015-06-09
Packaged: 2018-04-03 15:30:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4105948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pocky_slash/pseuds/pocky_slash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What is a marriage but a promise between two people, to each other?" Charles says. "Why does anyone else need to be involved? If you love each other enough, why do you need approval from anyone or any god to swear your lives to each other?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	fealty and offering

**Author's Note:**

> Last night, **pearl_o** and I were texting about the story she wrote me for my birthday, [Handfast](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4097323) (and go read that immediately if you haven't already), and what would happen if Charles had mentioned, casually, sometime on their roadtrip, that in the olden days marriages could be performed in secret by merely swearing a vow and physically consummating it. Then, two hours after I had gotten into bed, I got out, got my laptop, and emailed this to her.
> 
> (It has since been edited and cleaned up. Thanks, Pearl ♥)

The mutant they're tracking in this town is a holy man. According to Charles, he thinks his power is a gift from his god and believes a life dedicated to his church is the only way to pay back such extraordinary luck. Charles says it with a certain amount of dismissal. Though Erik is no longer religious, he thinks if Charles was anyone else, he'd be annoyed at that.

They're sitting on a bench in the afternoon sunlight, half-shaded by large, leafy trees as they watch the church and wait for their holy man to exit. Erik finds he's in no hurry; he's happy to enjoy the beautiful afternoon and the pleasant buzz of Charles lounging at his elbow.

The church doors open, but it's not their potential recruit who exits, but rather a blushing young couple. Erik doesn't need to see her simple white dress and the rose in his lapel to know they're newlyweds--the way they clutch each others' hands and laugh is enough for that.

"They've only just met at the start of the summer," Charles murmurs, his eyes following the couple down the steps and onto the sidewalk.

"And already they're prepared to spend a life together?" Erik asks. There's no bite to his words--he doesn't have it in him to be harsh on such a lovely day. "Impractical."

"I don't know," Charles says. "Sometimes you meet someone and you know. You just...know."

He turns and looks at Erik. His eyes are shielded by sunglasses, but Erik still recognizes the look and understands the meaning. Erik looks back, frozen with acknowledgement, with his feelings for Charles filling his chest, overwhelming his senses the way they do when he stops to think about all the ways that Charles has seeped into him in just a few short weeks. He's never loved like this, with his whole body, with his whole future. Suddenly a surprise wedding on a bright summer afternoon doesn't seem like such an impractical idea.

"Anyway," Charles says, turning away, his cheeks pink underneath the bottom edges of his sunglasses, "there were some cultures, years and years ago, when that's all it took. No big lavish weddings or even the presence of a priest--just the couple alone with their feelings and their commitment. They clasped their hands together and made a promise, and as long as it was consummated, that was that. It makes sense, in a way."

"Hiding?" Erik asks. His skin prickles with the thought. He's plenty familiar with rituals performed in secret--he wasn't an atheist until those secret rituals proved as worthless as the family that promised to hide his own.

"Not hiding," Charles says, dismissing Erik's sudden tension with a lazy wave of his hand. "More like privacy. What is a marriage but a promise between two people, to each other? Why does anyone else need to be involved? If you love each other enough, why do you need approval from anyone or any god to swear your lives to each other?"

It's academic, still--Charles' voice lilts a certain way when he lectures, an extra layer of condescension and arrogance buffering him from his audience. 

It's not academic to Erik. The words hover in his mind and inspire a spike of foolish longing that's helpfully interrupted by the arrival of their priest. He puts the thought to rest as he pushes himself to his feet, tapping Charles' forearm where his sleeve is rolled up to get his attention.

"That's our man," he says, and Charles startles out of his professorial reverie to climb to his feet and follow after Erik.

***

The priest turns them down. Erik thought he might.

Erik and Charles return to their hotel after a meandering walk through town. They eat at the little restaurant across the street and then wander back to their room, perhaps walking too close together. Charles fetches the bottle of scotch from his belongings and then leads them out the dingy sliding doors in the back of their room and across the scrubby lot next to their hotel, down into the ravine that runs along the river. 

The night is cool and quiet, the lip of the ravine holding back the noise of the street, sealing them into their own little world. The ravine and the field on the opposite side of the river are incongruously verdant. Charles wastes no time in insinuating himself into Erik's personal space, pressed against his side. He takes a swig from the bottle and hands it to Erik, staring across the river.

Erik thinks about the difference between hiding and privacy. He thinks about the way he's starting to smell like Charles' shampoo. He thinks about the future he sees for the first time, days and months and years spiraling out past the death of Sebastian Shaw rather than the end Erik always imagined. He thinks about the way the knowledge that he wasn't alone rended him in two and he thinks about the way that Charles pulled him up from the depths of the Atlantic and forged him into something new altogether.

Sometimes, you just know.

The crickets chorus around them and Erik puts the bottle down and takes one of Charles' hands tightly in his own. Charles looks up at him, that peculiar half-smile on his face, the one that means that he has no idea what's going on and he's thrilled by the novelty of it.

A few short weeks and Erik's already cataloging Charles' smiles.

Erik clears his throat.

"A promise," he says, staring out at the water for a moment before he forces himself to look at Charles instead. It requires it, really. "It's just a promise."

Charles' eyes widen in the low light.

"You need to--" Charles clears his throat. "You need to--mean it. To feel it. To believe it."

"I don't make vows lightly," Erik tells him. 

"I wouldn't imagine you would," Charles says. He takes a deep breath, then says, "A vow and consummation. That's all it takes."

"What's the vow?" he asks. "To love, honor, cherish?"

"I'm sure the actual words are in a language long dead, but I believe it was more along the lines of...a pledge to give oneself to their intended. To remain true." 

Part of Erik feels foolish still, flighty and distracted, wasting time thinking of romance when he should be hunting. Mostly, though, he feels the blaze of his connections to Charles, the way this love burns through him, hot and consuming, like nothing he's ever known.

Someone tried to own Erik once before, to take him by force and turn him into something else. Erik vowed then that no one would ever have that power over him again, but he thinks that giving himself willingly is something else entirely. Marriage is maybe less about power and ownership and more about fealty and offering. The meaning, the value of it is in that choice: his life, freely given to Charles for as long as Charles will have it. He thinks that if, after everything, he's willing to entertain this at all, it's all the more reason why he should.

If he's willing to submit, it must be love.

"Then that's nothing at all," Erik murmurs, Charles' hand still tight in his own. "I've done that already." He thinks he should feel silly saying the words out loud. He doesn't. "I've given myself to you, and I pledge to remain true."

His hand shakes, or maybe that's Charles' hand. Maybe it doesn't matter.

Charles has to clear his throat again. His eyes are very blue.

"And I give myself to you," he says very quietly. "And I pledge to remain true."

They don't move at first, their hands still clasped together, their shoulders still brushing, the enormity of this sitting between them, surrounded by the quiet burbling of the river and the evening symphony of the crickets. Eventually, Charles tips his head up for a kiss that Erik grants without pause. He tastes like scotch and he sinks his fingers into Erik's hair and doesn't let go. They kiss again and again until they're wrestling against their clothes and belts and shoes, panting and hissing and holding onto each other.

They consummate there in the grass, right where they've made their vow. Not a secret, merely private--something sacred. Something just for them.

**Author's Note:**

> And, ~*~in her way~*~, Pearl wrote a version of this that's a third of the length and twice as lovely, which you can find [here](http://pearlo.tumblr.com/post/121075739594/pearlo-so-yesterday-i-was-working-on-titling).


End file.
